


someday we'll celebrate today

by peskylilcritter



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Happy Ending, Mentions of War, Mentions of canon character death, mostly happy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-06
Updated: 2020-07-06
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:02:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25100596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peskylilcritter/pseuds/peskylilcritter
Summary: A glimpse of several characters the day after the Battle of Hogwarts, and a brief look at the first Christmas and New Years to end on a high note.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7
Collections: Chill Summer Exchange 2020





	someday we'll celebrate today

**Author's Note:**

  * For [stonefreeak](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stonefreeak/gifts).



> ive smudged the timeline a bit for this fic: in this verse there was no time to evacuate the younger students so they were instead hidden inside the castle.
> 
> (yes i did that bc i forgot about the evacuation until i noticed it while trying to figure out if charlie weasley was present for the battle.)
> 
> also, i absolutely imagined hermione as black and harry of indian descent while writing this. i just never found a way to make that clear in the text without it feeling out of place.

May 3rd dawns bright and clear but Harry sees none of it. Neither do Ron and Hermione. They are all asleep, dreamless and deep; the sleep of the utterly exhausted.

By the time they wake the early morning sun will have disappeared behind the clouds bringing fresh spring rain.

* * *

Sunrise finds Draco at the top of the Astronomy tower, wide awake and trying to shake off the grasping fingers of nightmares. Memories, really, distorted by his own fear and his sleeping mind.

He keeps expecting to wake up. Keeps testing the world for its realness and being secretly surprised when he finds it. Keeps waiting to be awakened in his own home, in the terror of the past two years.

It keeps on not happening, and the sun rises, and the Mark remains grey and still. The Dark Lord is dead and Draco is alive. It feels somehow miraculous. Impossible.

For a long time he doesn’t move. Wedged between the parapets, feeling the wind in his hair and the sun on his face, trying to feel safe in the knowledge that he has survived, his parents have survived, that the worst thing that’s ever happened to him is over.

The rain drives him back inside, soaked to the skin and shivering a bit. He’s reminded that he doesn’t currently have a wand and will have to dry out with time, and perhaps a change of clothes.

On the way back to the Slytherin common room he runs into McGonagall, hatless with her hair in a messy bun, looking incredibly harried.

He tries to duck his head and hurry past her but she stops him with a raised hand.

“Ah, Malfoy, come here.” She hands him a piece of parchment which turns out to be a list of names, some of them familiar. “When you get back to your common room, do take stock of the children. Just to make certain no one’s got lost.” She pauses, face pinched. “And to compare to the list of the dead. We’ll need to inform those students whose relatives died in the battle.”

Draco nods, swallowing hard, trying very hard to just not think at all, and turns to continue on his way.

After only a few steps, McGonagall calls after him.

“And do remind everyone that breakfast will be available as usual.”

Draco looks over his shoulder and says, “Yes, Professor,” without thought, and spends the rest of the walk wondering how McGonagall had managed to organize that.

* * *

Ron wakes choking on hair and too warm for comfort. For an incredibly disorienting moment he’s genuinely confused about where he is and why he can’t lift his left arm and what the weight on his chest is.

The memory comes back to him as he’s opening his eyes, squinting against the light. He pulls Hermione’s hair out of his mouth and shifts to look at her.

The angle makes it hard to see her face but he can feel her breathe and it’s the most reassuring thing in the world. Elsewhere in the room Harry is snoring.

It starts to dawn on Ron after a moment that they saved the world yesterday. Harry saved the world yesterday.

On an exhale Ron manages, “Bloody hell.”

Hermione curls up tighter, then relaxes and rolls half onto her back. Ron loses track of his thoughts watching her wake up.

She yawns then smacks her lips and sits up. Ron’s arm instantly feels like it’s being poked with hundreds of needles. Hermione shoves the hair out of her face and grimaces.

“I really need to shower. Why didn’t I shower yesterday?”

Ron grins at her, sitting up and shaking his arm. “Well, yesterday you said everything could wait until morning and fell asleep pinning my arm down.”

She makes a face at him but the corners of her lips keep twitching into a smile. “It was a rhetorical question,” she tells him very seriously before leaning over and pressing her lips to his.

Or at least Ron assumes that was her intention but he’s still grinning so her lips end up kind of on his teeth, noses bumping together.

She pulls back and meets his eyes. Ron is giggling before he knows it, and Hermione joins him quickly.

It’s a pretty great start to the rest of their lives.

* * *

The dream dissolves before his waking mind can catch a glimpse of it, chased away by the laughter he can hear.

Harry squints his eyes open and reaches for his glasses as he sits up. The blurry shapes in the next bed turn out to be Ron and Hermione, clutching at each other as they giggle.

The question is out of his mouth before his brain catches up. “What are you doing in the boys’ dorm?”

They barely pause to give him simultaneous incredulous looks and giggling some more, clearly seeing the realization in his expression. Harry drops back onto his pillow and seriously considers just going back to sleep.

His stomach overrules his head by gurgling loudly which silences his friends for a second and convinces him to get up after all.

It takes him until he’s cleaned his clothes with a hasty charm and dressed to realize that he absolutely does not want to face whatever’s waiting for him out there. In Hogwarts, in the rest of the world. Not so soon.

Instead, he calls for Kreacher.

Within minutes Harry, Ron and Hermione are enjoying a sort of makeshift picnic breakfast on the floor of the dormitory. For the first time in almost a year Harry can put down the worry he’s been carrying with him. The fear that his friends will die, that he’ll lose the family he loves, that he won’t live to see tomorrow.

It feels like flying.

* * *

It takes maybe five minutes before Draco decides to enlist the other prefects.

To his relief the few adults present volunteer to help, which leads to the somewhat bizarre sight of Father surrounded by first years, entertaining them with stories. Mother has joined two prefects who’ve taken over one of the large tables and covered them with parchment, ink and quills; they seem to be making lists.

Draco doesn’t get the chance to check. An overwhelmed sixth year grabs him by the sleeve and drags him up to the dormitories where a group of kids are huddled together, crying.

It takes nearly an hour to sort them out. One of them is a girl Crabbe had been courting; the reminder fills Draco’s lungs with phantom smoke. The others have all lost parents or siblings. A few are desperately worried because they haven’t heard from a relative and no one can tell them what happened to them.

He has to leave the room when one child asks the sixth year they’re clinging to, “But what if mummy never comes to get me?”

The panic drives him back to the common room just to see his own parents, alive and uninjured. He has to remind himself again that it’s over. That they’ve survived, all three of them; it’s still hard to believe.

Once his heart has slowed a bit he checks on Goyle; he hasn’t moved since Draco steered him to his bed yesterday. Then he goes back to checking names off his list.

* * *

By the time they make it downstairs the Gryffindor common room is bustling with activity, students of all ages mingling with members of the Order of the Phoenix. It’s an odd mix of somber and giddy.

Hermione spies a bunch of Weasley-red heads in one corner, all clustered together, and grabs Ron and Harry’s hands to drag them over.

Halfway across the room one of the younger students recognizes them and exclaims. Within seconds they’re swarmed; people crying, people thanking them, so much noise, so many people. The discomfort Harry’s been wearing like a cloak since he stepped out of the dorm intensifies visibly.

Everything Hermione tries to say gets lost in the noise until someone whistles with ear-splitting volume.

“Will you leave them be!” Neville says into the sudden silence.

Quite a few faces grow sheepish and the crowd disperses, if rather slower than Hermione would like. She glowers at those who seem like they might linger until they turn away.

Finally they reach the Weasleys. Mrs Weasley is sitting on one of the couches with George; both of them have clearly been crying. At some point after she and Ron followed Harry into the dormitory to sleep Charlie must have arrived and he’s sitting now on George’s other side.

With some effort Hermione holds back her tears to greet the Weasleys.

They welcome her and Harry both as if there was no difference between them and Ron; family in all the ways that matter.

Which reminds her of something she’s avoided thinking about. She needs to plan a trip to Australia.

* * *

Time feels oddly fast these days. Somehow endless yet passing quickly.

Perhaps that’s simply the consequence of living with a baby. Maybe it’s just that being murdered seems so much less likely now.

Teddy, having recently learned to crawl, is fascinated by the Christmas tree. In the two weeks since Harry and Andromeda put it he’s spent countless hours sitting under it, reaching for the branches and later the decorations, laughing his happy baby laugh and clapping his hands in delight.

Still, Harry’s glad Teddy’s asleep now.

He and Andromeda are sitting in the garden, watching the neighbours’ fireworks, sipping some kind of alcohol he doesn’t remember the name of.

Soon they’ll head to bed, and tomorrow they’ll return to routine.

Teddy will wake them up early, demanding food and attention. His hair will go through the entire rainbow over the course of the day and maybe he’ll change his skin tone to match Harry’s brown and then back to Andromeda’s pale and he’ll play with the tree until they take it out and replant it.

Nothing about Harry’s life is what he expected or dreamed of. It’s better than he could’ve imagined.


End file.
